Nadezhda Savchenko

KIEV, April 19. /TASS/. Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko said on Tuesday he had contacted ex-pilot Nadezhda Savchenko, who was sentenced to a prison term of 22 years in Russia, over the phone to ask her stop her hunger strike and she had agreed.

"I called Nadezhda Savchenko. Extended my words of encouragement," he wrote on his Twitter account.

He noted than together with her mother and sister he asked her to stop her hunger strike. "She agreed," he added.

It was Poroshenko’s second telephone call to Savchenko.

On March 22, the Donetsk city court in Russia’s southern Rostov region sentenced Nadezhda Savchenko, a Ukrainian ex-pilot, to 22 years in a general regime penal colony and a fine worth 30,000 rubles (442 U.S. dollars).

Savchenko was found guilty of the murder of journalists from Russia’s VGTRK television channel, Igor Kornelyuk and Anton Voloshin; of an attempt to kill civilians, and of illegal crossing of the Russian state border.